Christmas comes but once a year
And everyone must have his share
But poor Brother Willy in the jail
Drinking sour ginger beer!
Band!
-Traditional Guyanese masquerade toast
They are here again. Despite the strictures of COVID-19, masquerade bands have already begun to appear on the streets of Georgetown for the 2020 Christmas season. Although diminished, tattered, untutored and uninformed, they work the streets in the hot sun, keeping a centuries-old tradition going. They are not what they should be. Yet, they are to be encouraged, though perhaps not in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.
I had been noting for years now that the masquerade tradition in the Republic of Guyana is moribund. But as if to belie my analysis, small groups continue to appear every Christmas season. However, the question is apposite; are they keeping the tradition going?
My grim assessments have not only been resisted and contradicted by the persistent annual appearance of the bands who stop traffic on the streets, but by local practitioners of the art. I was roundly rebuked by one of them at a small conference in Georgetown in 2018. This was a consultation organised by Donald Sinclair as national director of the tourism sector. He had called together researchers, administrators, cultural groups, music and masquerade band leaders and practitioners to discuss the state of the art form with an eye to resuscitating it for tourism purposes.
I was invited to speak and had said that cultural traditional forms in a natural process of cultural change face cultural erosion, cultural intrusion, transformation and extinction. The masquerade tradition in Guyana is one of those. There are different influences and processes facing such phenomena, but in the case of Guyanese masquerade, it has long been fading away and is threatened by extinction. I further observed that the only places where I have seen signs of real masquerade bands, however diminished, were in Linden, and active groups and annual street processions on the Essequibo Coast.
A few persons at the conference protested. One gentleman said that was not true. He was the head of a band on the East Coast Demerara that still carried on the trade. I remembered him from interactions at Carifesta X in Guyana with me and Trinidadian playwright Rawle Gibbons who was then Head of Department at UWI Festival and Creative Arts. His skills were indeed impressive, and he was recruited to go to Trinidad, and was still working as a tutor in the craft there. Trinidad gained what Guyana lost. His band still existed on the East Coast, but was it truly active? Other band leaders and practitioners said yes. There were at least seven masquerade bands in Victoria and around other villages on the lower East Coast; seven active bands.
The leader of the Linden band, a gentleman known as “Three Feet”, was also at the consultation. I had interviewed him and his band during field research some years ago, and he represented Guyana at Carifesta in 2015. There was no representative of the Essequibo groups, so there was no first-hand report of continued activities there. Since I had conducted the field research on the Essequibo Coast, the annual competition among those bands at Christmas time sponsored by businessman Alfro Alphonso had ceased. Five masqueraders from Region Four had also gone to Carifesta in 2019 and they really fired up the Guyana Night performance, “A Year In A Day”, directed by Esther Hamer. So how is it that Guyanese masquerade bands can be deemed moribund?
Scraggly groups appear in Georgetown. They include many children. Children in these groups should be a good sign, since traditions die when they are not passed on and continued by young people. But in the case of those seen in these bands, they demonstrate no knowledge of the masquerade form – they cannot dance, they have not learnt to flounce, their costumes are arbitrary and faint copies of the minstrel, and do not represent any of the traditional masquerade characters. There is a general laziness and a disinclination to perform with verve and energy, let alone any familiarity with the craft. Drummers generally cannot play the known, recognisable masquerade rhythm with base, rhythm and kittle. There is no flute. Two or three languid drummers stand in a corner by a tree shaded from the sun, playing a lacklustre strain, aloof from the rest of the group who step out to stop traffic and solicit monetary donations.
This is not the tradition, and the question arises, does anyone teach them, the way “Three Feet” teaches his recruits in Linden. Is anyone actually learning the trade? Take for example, the masquerade toasts, such as that printed above. They are no longer recited by the performers, and toasts definitely are no longer a part of Guyanese masquerade performance. Yet these speech acts are forms of oral poetry that make interesting study. Paloma Mohamed has investigated them and did a recent conference paper.
But even more basic elements of the traditional art are lacking. At the 2018 consultation, I was surprised to discover that the East Coast Demerara groups do not seem to consider appearances on the street at Christmas a part of their duty. They are willing to occasionally perform on stage when requested in various shows and productions. They go to Carifesta, as has been said, small, selected groups of them. But do they ever appear as a full band anywhere at any time? They are willing to perform cameos in small groups, sometimes doing spectacular things with stilts dancing and the ‘mad cow’, but what of a full 20-piece band with all characters and music appearing on the road?
In continuing research, I asked whether any of the seven East Coast bands ever performed on the street in Georgetown during the season. The answers were tentative. I was told yes, some of them did, although I was not given any names. I was told that some came out, but only parts of the bands, the full ensembles were not out there.
If that is true, then how can you say the tradition is not dead, and you are practicing it? The main part of the tradition is performance on the road. Masquerade is not a museum art, to be exhibited at a location and viewed. It is not for three or four men on stilts to perform at a stage show or concert. It is not flouncing to show the techniques on stage. It is a band appearing on the road. If that is absent, then a major part of the tradition is lost.
Worse, I was told that parts of some of these bands from Victoria did appear last Christmas. It is frightening, then, that only a few members went out, not the whole band. It is unfortunate that there is no culture of a seasonal performing band with all its theatrical cast, sections, characters and segments in swing. I did see what was on the road last year, and it is horrifying to think those were the representatives of the seven East Coast bands. They appeared inept, bereft of skill, colour, meaning or spectacle, apart from being small in number. Those youths were untutored, and ill-costumed.
I have to conclude that true masquerade in Guyana is a lost art: the dance techniques of flouncing; the spectacular, underrated skill of stilts walking, stilts dancing; playing the characters such as mad bull, or the rarely seen Mother Sally or Bam-bam Sally; the toasts that are now totally silenced; the music – the three drums, the metal percussion (triangle) and the flute, with the dwindling flautists such as Three Feet or the man called “Potagee”.
They appear in parts and pieces; never see a full, competent band. There is still time for these bands to prove themselves. They did complain at the tourism consultation that they lack funds for costuming and equipment. I do not know if it is feasible for the Ministry of Culture to assist with funds. But the bigger question is, can the bands do it? Do any of them have the membership, the skills and the ability to come out and compete? Or is this weak fragment that is seen on the road today all that is left of them? Where are the Guyanese masqueraders? Are they only to be found on the Essequibo Coast? Do they still exist?
